Imagine how easy it would be for marketing departments to have a list of everything you do and like. The social networking site Facebook is constructing an advertising system that would do just that. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the website plans to market to its 30 million users based on what they define as important in their profiles.
These ads would show up differently than the banner ads and boxed flyers that appear on the borders of Facebook pages, say people familiar with the plan. Instead, they would be interspersed with items on the “news feed,” which is a running list of short updates on the activities of a user’s Facebook friends. In addition, the ads would show up on Facebook pages that feature services provided by other companies, one person says….
Eventually, it hopes to refine the system to allow it to predict what products and services users might be interested in even before they have specifically mentioned an area.